Sunday, 18 November 2012

1904-12-17

Women
are the great reformers of the world. Back as far as the memory of the oldest
inhabitant runneth, they tackled the budge question, and down through the
centuries, from the time poor old Noah filled up with booze, probably to keep
him from catching cold after his long confinement in the ark, down to the
present, they have made heroic warfare on the manufacture and sale of
intoxicating liquors. They are not to be blamed, poor souls, for their zeal in
this direction, for the curse of strong drink has robbed them of love and home
and the comforts of life. A man may be an “ornery cuss” and be a teetotaler,
but let the same fellow fill up with whiskey and he is ten times worse. Then
when Susan B. Anthony, bless her old heart, came out for women’s rights, the
world of women joined with her in demanding the protection of the law. And it
was a good thing they did, for down to that time woman was like the negro
slave, with no right to person or property. The lords of creation claimed
everything, and when they laid down to die, they disposed by will the property
the wife had helped create, often cutting her off with beggarly pittance. As
the result of fifty years and more, of earnest, persevering work on the part of
good old Susan B. and her associates, woman now rules the roost and perverse
man has to go back and sit down. Miss Bloomer, another reformer, took up the
question of dress and partly arrayed herself in men’s attire, and Lucy Stone
thought the trousers, at least, were so comfortable, especially in windy
weather, that she threw away her skirts and boldly advocated the Bloomer dress.
The women were all right as long as they knocked whiskey and fought for equal
rights before the law, but one day some dear creature was sickened by the smoke
from tobacco, and at once there was an outcry against its use. This has
continued till Sir Wilfred and his cabinet have made life miserable for them
because they will not pass a law inflicting the death penalty on the maker or smoker
of cigarets. If the dear women will just leave the smoker alone, he will puff
his way out York street and find a resting place overlooking Dundas marsh.

Now it is the women of Germany who are
coming to the front as dress reformers, and all the reform associations on this
side of the Atlantic ocean are watching with keen interest the result. And it
is the ever-offending corset that is the whalebone of contention. It is not a
new subject of attack, for it comes up two or three times in every generation.
You cannot persuade a girl that a corset is unhealthy so long as it adds a charm
and comeliness to her fine form. It is unfortunate that she will tighten up a
little closer than is healthy, when she wants to look real captivating. Don’t
you remember when the girls wore steel belts and held their breath while they
pulled them up to the last notch? Of course, my dear lady, you do; but it is
not the object of these Musings to tell tales out of school. The matrons of
Germany, when they were young and weighed less than 125 pounds, no doubt wore
belts, and steel ones at that; and now that they begin to turn the scale at 160
pounds and upward, and their waists are expanding so that the wearing of
corsets becomes uncomfortable, especially after a delicious meal like unto that
mother used to prepare, those good old ladies, who are now fair, fat and forty,
are asking the German minister of education to issue a preemptory order forbidding
the wearing of corsets in girls’ schools. Why not include girls who do not go
to school? The minster is clothed with autocratic power, and if he says,
“Simon, thumbs up!” up goes every thumb without question. BY a stroke of his
pen he can direct the principal of every school where you ladies are being
educated to prohibit the wearing of corsets; or, he might go still farther, and
cut out any article of clothing. Great is the minister of education in Germany.
No teacher may dare defy the minister; and if he so desires, the symmetry of form and lines of beauty that
add so much grace to the charming young frauleins of Emperor Billy’s domains can
be changed in the twinkling of an eye. The German dames have probably reached
the age where corsets are valueless in preventing a further spread of
anatomical lines, and seem determined to make the girls as shapeless as their
sprawling selves. The dress reformers the world over await the German
minister’s decision with no little anxiety, and should the fiat go forth that
corsets are doomed, it would not be surprising if Premier Ross might not be
compelled to add corsets to the prohibition planks in his platform in order to
secure the hearty support of the W.C.T.U.

“The People’s Almanack, for the year
of our Lord 1844, being leap year. The seventh of Queen Victoria, and the
eighty-fourth of British rule in Canada. Containing besides the astronomical
calculations and official lists, much useful information adapted to the
circumstances of the country. By Andrew Marvel, Toronto: Leslie Brothers,
Printers and Publishers.” On the last page of the cover is the advertisement of
“E. Lesslie & Son, druggists, booksellers, &c., Dundas. Have at present
for sale a few bales of excellent hops, growth of 1843; and of Spanish sole
leather, coopers’ edge tools, carpenters’ tools, bar iron and cast steel, and a
general assortment of light and heavy hardware.” That firm evidently must have
been the advance agents of the department store system. It is the only
advertisement in the almanac. The first 26 pages are devoted to the calendars
for the year and official information pertaining principally to the city of
Toronto. Sir Charles Theophilius Metclafe was Governor of Canada, and his
salary was 7777 pounds, 15 shillings, 6 ½ pence. Queen’s counselors were not
very numerous in those days, there being only seven in Upper Canada, Sir Allan
Macnab being one of the number. Sir Allan was in luck, holding profitable
offices, for his name appears in the year 1844 as agent for issuing marriage
licenses and as county registrar. J. Wetenhall was warden of the Gore district;
E. Cartright Thomas, sheriff and district clerk; A. Gifford, clerk of the
peace; Henry Beasley, treasurer; John Wilson, judge of surrogate court; George
Rolph, registrar of surrogate court. Hon. J. B. Robinson was chief justice of
the court of Queen’s Bench, with a salary of 1666 pounds, 13 shillings, 4 pence
and four judges lived sumptuously on $4,000 a year each. The collector of
customs for the port of Hamilton was John Davidson.

Andrew Marvel, the compiler of the
almanac, was the nom-de-plum of John (or James) Lesslie, who was the publisher
of the Toronto Examiner and afterward postmaster in that city. If the articles
in the almanac are an index of his bitterness as a writer then he was certainly
as bitter as they made them. In those days, Canadian editors wrote with pens
dripped in gall, and they were not very choice in expressing themselves about
their political opponents. Lesslie took advantage of his almanac to rip up the
churches, especially the Anglican, Roman Catholic and the Presbyterian. Here is
a specimen of his writings: “The government table is spread for all. The stern
Presbyterian eats of the same dish with the haughty advocate of Prelacy, who
hands him over to the uncovenanted mercies of God. The intolerant Episcopalian
quaffs the wine of administration with the Roman Catholic, while they
reciprocally charge each other as the agents of the most damnable heresy. And
all three partake of the fruits of the hothouse of political iniquity with the
Brahmins and Buddha priests of India, while they are professionally laboring
for the conversion of the latter to the Christian faith.”

Lesslie was well-known in Dundas to
the settlers early in the 40s, for it is possible he may have located there for
a time after the family came to this country. John Maclean, father of the
editor of the Toronto World, lived in Dundas about that period and was employed
in the Lesslie drug store. He was a man of some literary ability and was a
contributor to the newspapers. Maclean made a special study along economic
lines, and was one of the early advocates for a protective policy for Canada.
Smiley and Lesslie and Maclean, and that class of vigorous writers looked far
enough ahead to see that if Canada was ever to become a prosperous country it
must come through manufacturing industries. It is interesting to study the
characters of the men who blazed the way for a “Made in Canada” policy.

As the almanac was evidently printed
for circulation in Toronto, many items of interest pertaining to that city are
given in it. The salary of a mayor at that time was $1200 a year. The assessors
were allowed 5 per cent on the amount of taxes collected, which made it to the
interest of those officers to see that the property owners were assessed high
enough. There were eight constables to guard the city, who were paid $350 a
year each, and the high bailiff’s salary was $500. It cost Toronto $2,530 a
year to light its streets with gas, and $1,000 for water. The population of
Toronto in 1843 was 17,305, and the assessed value of property was $316,618.
The receipts from taxes were $67,807; the expenditures $64, 694. Each child had
to pay 25 cents a month for the privilege of going to school. The Temperance
Reformation society had a membership of 2,500, and the pledge was “To suppress
by precept, example and unity of effort, the dangerous and injurious practice
of drinking intoxicating liquors.”

Dorothy Doubleday – that is not her
name, but it will answer the purpose – was a dream of delight at a southend
reception the other afternoon in a chiffon cloth gown of mignonette green,
ornamented with point applique lace, and set off with a panne of a deeper
shade. Do not fancy for a moment that it is the Saturday Musings man that
conceived the description of the fair Dorothy’s toilet, for he has not the
slightest idea of what a panne is. Dorothy made it plain that she intended to
adhere to the shirring of which she was so fond, for the beautiful work of that
kind about the hips was more pronounced than anything in which the southend
girls had yet dropped on. It takes an expert to tip off the fine points in the
perfect dressing of a beautiful girl, and rather than run the risk of
blundering, we give the description as given by a celebrated modiste. The
material of the skirt was cut off to disclose the gleam of lavender silk that
lined it, and the shirt was decorated with lace medallions. A bolero effect was
produced by the shirring of the bodice, which had a narrow yoke of lace. The
upper sleeves were made of short puffs of dominant material, fitting snugly at
the elbows with rich lace flounces falling almost to the wrists. Insertions of
the lace medallions in the front of the bodice, with dainty velvet bows
between, vastly improved the whole. Dorothy wore a black velvet picture hat –
the same as she wore last Sunday morning in church – with six short, thick
ostrich plumes caught in the front, and her muff and stole were of ermine. The
charming Dorothy was a picture of loveliness, and there were none to compare
with her at that afternoon reception.

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It is a rare thing to read in the
telegraphic dispatches of a man committing suicide because he could not succeed
in getting employment. Men become discouraged because of physical inability to
provide for their families , and the suffering and want in their homes
dethrones reason; and then the poison or pistol route is used to end it. In
this busy, bustling world it seems almost impossible that there is not work for
every willing hand; and yet it is true that even in a manufacturing city like
Hamilton, there are times of enforced idleness for men who are not looking for
holidays, but prefer to put in sixty hours a week in the workshops. Men with
trades and men without trades crowd into the larger cities from the country,
and nine times in ten, they do not better themselves. Young men leave the farm
because they think the life one of drudgery and loneliness, and move into the
cities to better their condition. Do they better their condition? When they
leave the farm, they leave a life of independence to become the hewers of wood
and the drawers of water for their city employers. Every young man can own a
farm of his own, even if it is only fifty acres, and from it he can earn a good
living for himself and family, and he is his own master. He may have to work
long hours during a few months of the year while raising his crops, but there
be many months of comparative ease. Every acre he adds to his farm makes him
more independent, and when old age comes, he can sit down in comfort and say : “Soul,
take thy ease.” The city toiler is fortunate if he can even buy a home, and it
takes years of economy to do that. There is nothing as callous and cruel as the
eternal grind of city life. Men and women die in cities and their next door neighbor
neither knows nor cares. Out in God’s open country all the world is kin, and
sickness and sorrow in one house draw sympathy from the whole township.